Once we identify who could benefit it’s time to determine what types of information they need or want. In many BI implementations this is where you start the long arduous task of designing and writing a bunch of reports for everybody in your company.

The good news about a BI solution like MITS is that we’ve leveraged nearly 20 years working with wholesale distributors to create a package of premade reports, dashboards, and scorecards representing best practices across hundreds of distributors. Instead of spending months or years creating everything from scratch, new MITS customers use these premade dashboards, scorecards, and reports right out of the box for everyone from their management team, to sales, inventory, purchasing, and accounts receivable personnel.

It’s not uncommon for new MITS customers to find 80 percent of their reporting needs met on day one using our premade content. Since everything is categorized by function, it’s easy to locate and manage. Review this premade content and then sit down with people from the various business functions throughout your company to see what they want:

What metrics are used to monitor and manage the business processes within your company?

Does your company have a target level for inventory, turns, gross profit percent, and GMROI?

Do your associations or trade groups publish metrics or benchmarks that your company wants to track?

Determine whether you will need to make any modifications to the premade content or create any special reports for your users.

Leverage Libraries

Consider creating separate libraries for each group of users that contains just the information they want and need. While MITS comes with nearly 20 premade dashboards and scorecards,we've found that a typical user ordinarily needs just one or two along with a handful of key reports. Using libraries makes it easy for people to find and use just the information they need. For those people who don’t want to log into the system you can set up everything to email on whatever frequency they choose. If some individuals would like the ability to edit or create their own reports you can allow this by individual user too.

Implementing a BI solution shouldn’t be a mind-boggling task. Talk with your team about what information is needed at every level of the business. Look at best practices in wholesale distribution. If you are implementing a solution like MITS, take advantage of the premade reports, dashboards, and scorecards that come with it.